Sarah Mowaswes

Edward Said was always a familiar name at my dinner table. Since I was a child, I walked past our oak bookshelf that carried the spine of his magnum opus Orientalism, intrigued by its cover image of a thick blue snake coiled around the torso of a young boy. My father would listen to Said’s lectures at his home office. Sometimes he would invite me, peering from the doorway, to listen; sometimes I would catch stray phrases. From this early osmosis, I came to a vague yet strong sense that Said spoke about “our part of the world” — whatever…